I Told My Cat I Admire Her, Yet She Continues to be Aloof

Whenever I drop off a box of old clothes and miscellaneous clutter at Goodwill, I have to go into the store itself and take a look around. I’m amazed, first, at some of the things that people donate and, second, that the Goodwill employees deem these items salable. White patent leather belts. Used underwear. And my personal favorite, Hershey’s Cocoa tins. Not full of cocoa. Just the empty can on sale for a quarter. My local Goodwill store always has at least 20 of these on the shelf.

Oh. When I went to look for a photo of the tin I was talking about, I found it on an antiques site that is selling that same tin for $18.95. Could you excuse me for a bit? I need to go to Goodwill and pick up a few things.

I do like to browse the books section at Goodwill. If you ignore the 9000 copies of The Clan of The Cave Bear that they have in stock, it’s a good place to find out-of-print books for under a dollar, whereas the same book at Half-Price Books would be placed in the Collectibles section and go for $20. In fact, our Goodwill even has an outlet store, where the books go for 30 cents. And for $3, you can buy as many clothes as will fit in a garbage bag, though the patent leather white belts still aren’t selling.

The last time I was in the book section, I was ecstatic to find a good-as-new copy of one of the most disgusting books ever, The Total Woman by Marabel Morgan. This book was a huge hit in the early ’70s, and it’s from this book that the suggestion that a wife wrap herself in nothing but Saran Wrap and greet her husband at the front door when he returns from work purportedly originated. This is Marabel:

I don’t know. Maybe wax paper would be a better choice.

In any event, the book was originally published in 1973 and became something of a bible to women of the era who preferred not to have rights or respect or any of those other pesky things that only ugly girls think are important. It’s ostensibly a self-help book that shows you (meaning, you the wife, whose sole responsibility it is) “how to make your marriage come alive!” but Marabel really didn’t need a whole book to get her point across. Allow me to condense the 251 pages of Marabel’s wisdom into a few brief words: Women of America! Go lie down on your front porch by the door! When your husband wipes his feet on you, try not to grunt, even if he is wearing those spiky golf shoes!

I didn’t buy the book because I thought it was interesting sociologically, however; I bought it because I thought it would be hilarious. It sometimes is, but the grossness of Marabel’s entire approach to her marriage overwhelms the humorous aspects. Here are some of the chapter titles: Accept Him, Admire Him, Adapt to Him (which also includes a chapter section entitled, “Oh, King, Live Forever”), and Appreciate Him, you know, for all of the things that he lets you do for him. She developed this method after her husband Charlie became justifiably angry that she had selfishly made dinner plans for them on a night when he had also made plans for them without telling her because he is a man and men don’t have to tell you shit, apparently. He then told her that from that point on, when he made plans for them to do something, he would tell her 20 minutes beforehand, and she would use that time to get ready to go, and there would be no discussion of it. After she stopped crying, she realized what a shrew she had been (what the … ?), and began the whole Accept, Admire, Adapt business. The day that Charlie came home early from work to surprise her with a new refrigerator/freezer, she knew she was on the right track!

So now you are asking yourselves, “how can I get my man to buy me a new refrigerator/freezer?” Or possibly, “I don’t have a man. If I ever pull myself together enough to get a man, how can I get my man to buy me a new refrigerator/freezer? What’s that you say? I should get an education, have a career, make my own money, and buy my own refrigerator/freezer, and if, along the way, I meet a nice man I want to share my life with as a full and equal partner, then that will be great, but if I never meet that man, then I can still be happy and have foods that are cooled to the appropriate temperatures? I CAN’T HEAR YOU I CAN’T HEAR YOU! LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!” Well, you have come to the right place, my friends. Here are the actual techniques used by Marabel that saved her marriage and put her in large appliance heaven.

1. As soon as you finish feeding your husband breakfast, decide what you will feed him for dinner. You never want to be caught at 4:30 in the afternoon with nothing on hand but the fixings for something he doesn’t enjoy, like chicken a la king or tuna casserole. How is your king supposed to live forever without the proper nourishment?

2. Let your husband be in charge of the finances. Never tell him what to do with his money. You must accept him in his role as provider and as head of the family. Your job is to take care of the kitchen, and if you do it well, you might get a new toaster to go with that shiny new fridge! What’s that? You don’t like toast? That’s okay. Your husband does and that’s all that matters.

3. Admire him when he talks to you. Put down your magazine and listen while he talks about football, even though you, being a woman, have no interest in football. Don’t interrupt or be preoccupied. Let him know he’s your hero. Tell him you love his body and that you’re impressed with his muscularity. Why, in no time flat, he will be opening jars for you! (But don’t overdo it, girls; only give him the jars that you really can’t handle.)

4. If your husband doesn’t come home for weeks, don’t mention it to him. Instead, make his home life so wonderful that he won’t want to disappear to Las Vegas or Bangkok or where ever it is that he goes to get away from your shrewish nagging. Marabel doesn’t say what will happen if he continues to disappear for weeks on end, but I wouldn’t worry. Penicillin is inexpensive and readily available!

5. If you and your husband have a disagreement about which restaurant to go to, tell him your preference, but then let him make the final decision. If you force him to go to the restaurant you prefer, you will only end up giving both of you indigestion. And while your digestion is of little consequence, there is also his digestion to be considered. He is a king! Respect the alimentary canal of your king!

6. If your husband comes home at 6:00 PM, take a bath at 5:00. Remove all those prickly hairs (I suggest you use Nair) and brush your teeth, floss, then brush again, and finish with mouthwash. (I am not even kidding, people. This is what she says.) Greet him at the door, and spice things up with a costume or two. Marabel had great success with a pink babydoll and white boots, but the important thing is to keep him off guard: be a pixie one night, and a pirate the next! While you want to use discretion, your kids will love your outfits too! As Marabel says, “Can’t you just imagine Junior on the sandlot telling his friends, ‘I’ve got to go now, guys. Got to see Mom’s outfit for tonight.’”

And scene. There’s actually more, but I don’t want to throw up again. It’s interesting to me that the business about the Saran Wrap is not actually in the book, although Marabel is always credited with doing this. And I mean “credited” only in the attributive sense and not as though she did something praiseworthy because if there is one thing that even the best naked bodies don’t hold up well under, I would imagine it’s being made to look all squashed down and shiny. I’m going to hope that the Saran Wrap scenario appeared in one of her other books because the alternative, that someone took a look at Marabel and thought it would be cool to promote the image of her wrapped up like a block of cheese, is pretty demeaning to her, even despite the fact that she built a career on demeaning herself.

It’s also interesting, by which I mean horrifying, that if you go look at the customer reviews for this book over on Amazon, they’re mostly positive. Thirty-five years after women thanked Marabel for egregiously insulting them, a new generation is thanking her again, and amongst themselves recommending other helpful books, such as The Surrendered Wife, Becoming the Woman of His Dreams, and How to be the Almost Perfect Wife: By Husbands Who Know. I mean, I realize that I’m just a mean-spirited, stunningly beautiful old spinster, or at least some of the words in this sentence, but how about some books about how if your guy won’t buy you a smooth-top range unless you scrub yourself down in the middle of the day and squeal over his big muscles, then maybe get a cat? Cats are nice.

Here’s the thing. Emotionally, I don’t think that men and women are all that different. And for my part, the last thing I want is some fool ironing his jeans and shedding tears of joy every time I scratch my ass. Every woman has dated that guy at least once, and it is both painful and sometimes kind of frightening, depending on the level of slavish devotion exhibited. So I can’t imagine that a man would want a woman who is obedient and worshipful and who answers the door dressed as a cowgirl or an astronaut on a regular basis, or at least that’s not what he’d want in the long term. Then again, maybe I know less about men than I think I know, and that is in fact what they want. If so, and you are one of these men, might I suggest you get a dog? Dogs are nice. And dog food? Requires no refrigeration.